Onyx (8 page)

“Would you like to?”

She hesitated. “I promised my father I would be back for early lunch.”

“It's only a little past ten. There's time to spare.”

“Then I would adore to.” They were emerging from the depot into the surrounding crush. “I'll go tell Flaherty,” she said, and dodged lightly through the melee of horsedrawn traffic toward the Major's carriage.

The land around the city is flat, so from the 180-foot tower of the City Hall they had a panorama that faded into the distant lavender haze of timberland. Farms wore their bright spring skirts of blossoming fruit trees and new green crops. Nearer in, church spires poked through freshly leafed branches. Ferries, tugs, barges, deep-water vessels, sailed over the sunstruck Detroit River. From here one could see the entire town of Windsor, as well as Belle Isle, which, as Antonia pointed out, was shaped like an arrowhead. Directly below them throbbed the business heart of the city with its traffic-clogged arteries.

Antonia circled the tower eagerly, and because of her effervescent delight Tom, too, saw the varied beauties of the landscape. On the walk here she had asked about the shop. He had told her that Trelinack, his brother Hugh, and five mechanics worked with him.

“Tell me about your family?” he asked.

“Family?”

“I only know the Major.”

“Father …” Sighing, she watched a lavender pigeon separate itself from the flock to sit alone on the parapet. “Father's a brilliant scholar, a historian. He knows everything there is to know about Gothic architecture.”

“And your mother?”

“Mama died when I was two. All I can remember about her is that she had warm, soft arms. She came from Florence. I never met her family. Father doesn't like them.”

“Why?”

“He's never really said, but I think it's because they argue a lot with one another—and everybody else. About once or so a year we get a letter from Italy, asking for money.”

It didn't sound an impressive connection. Before Tom could question further, he noticed a man carrying a small boy on his shoulders step onto the deck.

“Henry!” Tom exclaimed.

“Tom Bridger,” the man replied, his greeting smile pulled out of shape by the child's hands. Setting him down, he took off his curl-brim bowler to Antonia. Wiry, of medium height, with a brown mustache and wavy brown hair parted neatly near the center, his one compelling feature was his eyes, a sharp, intense blue. “So this is what you do all day.”

“I never thought I'd meet
you
here during working hours, Henry.”

“I've been promising Edsel a treat for months.”

“Hello, Edsel,” Tom said. “Miss Dalzell, I'd like you to meet a good friend of mine. Edsel Ford. That old gentleman is his father.”

The boy took off his cap, gravely extending his hand. Antonia knelt to shake it before she took the father's hand. Tom was lifting the round-faced child to see over the parapet. “Look at that jam-up down there, Edsel. See? At Library and Farmer a horse swerved and his wagon got stuck. For twenty minutes nothing's moved.”

“One day there'll be no traffic problems,” said Henry Ford.

“The roads'll be safer—and cleaner,” Tom said. “We won't have runaways or—”

“Dad,” interrupted Edsel, his round face worried. “Not a single horse?”

“Well, maybe a few,” his father replied.

“None,” Tom said firmly. He turned to Antonia. “In case you haven't guessed it, Henry and I are in the same line.”

“Tom and me, Miss Dalzell, we intend putting the people of this country in motor carriages.”

“Automobiles,” Tom said, letting the French word roll in his mouth. “Ford and Bridger automobiles will be what you see down there.”

He glanced over Edsel's head, meeting Henry Ford's blue gaze. The May sunlight was too real for their dream, the obstacles and impossibilities glittered like fool's gold in their eyes. They both blinked. After a few moments Tom and Antonia said good-bye to the Fords and started down.

As they descended the first flight Tom said carefully, “The Major's serious about us not seeing each other.”

“Tom, I wish …”

“What?”

“Oh, it's so stupid.”

“Stupid? You're his niece, and I'm his mechanic.” Reaching the landing, they halted. They stood close enough for him to feel—or imagine he felt—the warmth emanating from her slight body. “But he's not the point. Your father's the one who counts. I'd like to meet him.”

“You can't. He's ill,” she said sharply. Outside the tall window, pigeons circled, casting odd shadows in the dust-streaked sunlight. “But I've told him all about you. When you came to fix the study clock I told him. Since then he's been interested in motorcars. He marks his journals and magazines to read me the news about them.” She spoke rapidly.

She's lying
, Tom thought. Hurt, angry, he tasted the bitterness of rejection. Clearly, her father wouldn't approve of him, any more than her uncle had.
She's a rotten liar
. The small muscles below her cheeks worked as she fought back tears, and to his rush of other emotions was added an infuriating urge to take her in his arms and comfort her.

“In that case,” he said coldly, “he and I will have something to talk about.”

“The doctors don't allow him visitors.”

“None?”

“Not yet.”

“I see.”

She drew a deep breath. “Thursdays I shop at J. L. Hudson's. Would you believe it? At two thirty I am invariably in the dry goods department.”

Sneaking, Tom thought. Do I want to sneak?

She gripped her parasol handle. “Thursday,” she said.

“Thursday?”

She nodded, smiling. It was a timidly hopeful little smile.

“By coincidence that's the exact time I do my own ribbon shopping,” he teased. He took her arm, leading her swiftly down the stone steps. Laughing breathlessly, they emerged from City Hall.

IV

That Sunday afternoon Antonia led Claude Hutchinson to the high-ceilinged drawing room that, inevitably, reminded her of that unhappy Dessert Social. Setting the box of Duval's divinity fudge that Claude had handed her on the round table, she turned to him. Her face was very white.

“Claude, you mustn't visit unless it's to see Uncle.”

“But you have a sweet tooth, Antonia, and I promised him to feed it in his absence.”

“No,” she said, fiddling with the bric-a-brac on the whatnot.

A Meissen angel nearly toppled: with a gasp she rescued it. “You aren't to call on
me
, Claude.”

Claude sat on a love seat, hunching his shoulders. He was not overweight, yet his obvious distress gave an obese ungainliness to his movements. “I'm sorry,” she murmured.

“You never gave me any reason to hope,” he said. “Everything I do is because I … care for you, Antonia.”

“Claude, you're so kind …” She had not realized how profoundly he'd cared for her, and she struggled against tears.

“I assumed it was because of your age.” He stared down at his knees. “That's why I never declared myself.”

“There's somebody else. We've known one another a long time.”

“How long?”

“Since the first week I came to Detroit.”

“Well, well, what a discovery,” he said, attempting to disguise his misery with a jocular comment.

There was a long silence. He did not raise his head.

“Claude, you're too nice.… I feel terrible about this.” Her voice shook. “I never should have permitted Uncle to keep inviting you. It's all my fault.”

“So that's an end to that,” he said in the same heavy, jesting note, and pushed to his feet. His shoulders bent, he walked cumbersomely from the room. She followed.

After the front door closed behind him, she sank into a straight-backed, comfortless hall chair, burying her face in her hands. It was not in Antonia to witness Claude's hurt and humiliation without feeling the pangs as keenly as he.

V

Belle Isle, the city's largest park, boasted not only the ice-skating pavilion but also a shingled building that housed the Detroit Boat Club (the country's oldest river boat club), tennis courts, a baseball diamond, a deer park. However, this sunlit Thursday afternoon Tom and Antonia avoided these attractions, meandering along a seldom used path where the marsh had been dredged. Oaks and maples dappled the sunshine as they walked around a little pond. Halting at a bench, Tom used his handkerchief to dust off a place for Antonia. Water lilies floated, and there was an occasional splash of an unseen frog.

“It's so lovely,” she murmured.

“Peaceful,” he agreed, twining his fingers with hers in a fugitive, trembling clasp.

They watched a squirrel, tail raised in a question mark, scamper across the path, and at the same instant turned to face each other. Tom felt the green world, the tranquil water, rush at him then recede. His heart pounded. Leaning toward her, he touched her mouth with a tender, light kiss. “I've thought of you every day since I first saw you. It was nearly impossible, staying away,” he whispered against her ear.

“Tom …”

“I promised your uncle I wouldn't come around until I had some prospects.”

“Tom …”

Putting his arm over her shoulder, he said, “You're beautiful, wonderful, far, far above me.” He touched the soft warmth of her earlobe.

“No.… I'm not.…”

“Antonia.” With his forefinger he traced the satin smoothness of her lip. Again the drooping branches and bobbling water lilies rushed toward him and withdrew, leaving him scarcely able to breathe.

A boy rolled a hoop along the path. They moved apart, rising.

They said very little, but their hands were clasped, and the afternoon melted as if touched by a watercolor brush.

VI

The Major's timing was terrible.

Andrew Carnegie had begun the process of gathering the steel industry into his arms, and the Major's financial kingpin, J. P. Morgan, was the steel magnate's banker. The very day of the Major's arrival in New York, Morgan was called to Pittsburgh. In his absence the Major sounded out other bankers regarding a loan on the largest furniture factory in Michigan, situated on prime Detroit River frontage, insured with Lloyd's of London for $250,000. He never got a chance to display Heldenstern's meticulously doctored books. Some bankers were courteous, others blunt, all informed him that no loans were being made on such collateral as a furniture factory.

The Major felt himself falling into an abyss. Continually he reminded himself that he and Pierpont were good friends, they had shared raffish good times aboard the financier's yacht, the
Corsair III
, Pierpont would not let him down. To escape the stifling claustrophobia of his doubts the Major attached himself to one of Mrs. Corbett's protégées, a tall, slender, black-haired Southern girl of undepletable sexual talent and most extravagant taste.

The Monday of the second week of Morgan's absence, the Major boarded a crowded early train to Washington to visit his patent attorney, Mitchell Polhemus.

In the well-polished office the Major unlocked his pigskin case, taking out the two rolls of blueprints.

“More?” inquired Mitchell Polhemus. A hunchback, he wore his frock coat in the generously cut style of thirty years earlier. “Are these also connected to the horseless carriage?”

“Yes. Improvements of the carburetor and cooling system.”

“Major Stuart, do you honestly believe this machine has a chance of becoming popular?” Mitchell Polhemus was an honest lawyer. Never casual about his profession, he played devil's advocate with his clients before a blueprint crossed the cherrywood desk.

“Popular? Never, Mr. Polhemus, never. But quite a substantial number are being built in Europe, and this year in America maybe a thousand were sold.”

“That many? I never would have believed it.”

“The figure came from
Horseless Age
, so doubtless it is exaggerated. Still, think of Newport. Mrs. Belmont has motorcar tournaments on the lawn of Belcourt—her friends decorate their vehicles with flowers. The Vanderbilts, Stuyvesant Fish, the Whitneys.”

“The toys of a few won't bring you royalties enough to pay my fees.”

“Other wealthy people around the country will copy them,” said the Major.

Mitchell Polhemus nodded gravely. He had done his duty. It was time to get down to business. “Would you like your previous applications to be acted upon? As we discussed before, from the date of issuance a patent has a life of seventeen years.”

The Major stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Is it more profitable to wait and see if there's a larger demand? Or by the year 1916 will this novelty be long forgotten?” He frowned down at the desk. “More shops open each month.”

“I'll do as you wish.”

“Put off filing,” the Major decided.

Mitchell Polhemus's long hunchback's fingers took the rolls of crisp paper. “And these are to be filed like the others? In your name?”

“Yes, in my name alone,” answered the Major without hesitation. “As I told you previously, the inventor, my young mechanic, is a wizard at this type of thing. But he has no concept of orderly business dealings. He's against patents.”

“No!”

“Imagine this, he believes that the patent office has the express goal of stifling ideas. I must go behind his back to protect both of us.”

“He's lucky to have you as a mentor,” said the attorney, rising to put the rolled blueprints in a deep cabinet. “The young can be dangerous to themselves.”

“Foolishly, idealistically dangerous,” agreed the Major.

The two men shook hands.

The office was on Pennsylvania Avenue. On the bustling thoroughfare, the Major, untypically, did not eye the pretty women in their soft, light summer frocks, nor did he notice the self-important governmental officials, the glossy horses and lacquered carriages. His business was accomplished, and he had fallen blindfolded and muffled back into his nightmare. His fears that Pierpont might not come through sent chills through his enormous belly. He ached to return to the glowing warmth of Antonia in Detroit, yet his financial needs forced him to ignore his personal comfort.